Tag Archives: story hour

Seventh Session (10 page pdf) – “Ilizmagorti” – The home of the Red Mantis assassins! But fear turns quickly to drinking. And safaris! Shimye-Magalla commands her faithful to recover a holy artifact…

So Ilizmagorti is the not so secret HQ of the Red Mantis assassin cult. So “don’t jack with the locals” is the order of the day. This puts a bit of the fear into the PCs but then they have a good time…

Ilizmagorti is detailed in Cities of Golarion, and they have a sidebar with all these local booze concoctions. I buy these books to use every scrap of local color, so I make the navigator Tarek more interesting by him being a closet epicurean who knows all the best places to eat and drink on the island. The PCs happily take his lead and I get to roll off all the various boozes of the island… From the Rusty Cutlass to the Dark and Stormy to the Whore’s Breakfast, they drink them all.

And in an entertaining cameo, when Sindawe goes to the Quarterdeck, a ship’s captain-only tavern, he shares info and shoots the shit with Captain Harrigan, the villain of the first part of the Skull & Shackles adventure path.

But then, a dream… Many of the crew share allegiance of some sort or another to Desna, Gozreh, or the janiform combo of the two, Shimye-Magalla, who is worshipped down in these parts. She comes to them and encourages them to retrieve a holy artifact!

They ask around and find out that Captain Jared “Red Skewer” Tarin and his crew are holed up at their base on the island with the loot. And that a half dozen other pirate ships are lurking nearby because they all want his score for themselves.

Wogan asks, “What’s on the land side?”

“Apes. Man eating plants. Folks building ice factories. It would be daring but certainly less awful than the sea wall.”

Note the Mosquito Coast reference? Paul Theroux? Read a book!!!

Anyway so safaris to see dinosaurs aren’t uncommon here, so they book one as cover and head out into the bush with the plans of ascending Tarin’s Crown…

Sixth Session (8 page pdf) – “Finding Ilizmagorti” – Betrayal and gnomes go hand in hand as their castaway reveals his dark secret. Then it’s all storms and sea-whores as they sail southward.

Well so one day I had this idea come to me about a guy who was a “castaway” but was really like a ship serial killer. Specifically a summoner who could blame attacks on “the monster” – his eidolon.

Kemblor is the implementation of that daydream. His sea-dragon manages to drag off and devour one crewman, Nimborn, and harries the ship for days. Finally, as PCs do, they go into crazy no-backing-down-follow-it-into-the-depths-and-kill mode and drag it up, causing ol’ Kemblor to start busting out the spells. Pit and grease spells make for an entertaining if foregone conclusion. After a break to combat a storm, they keelhaul him to death (there’s convenient rules for keelhauling in Skull and Shackles).

Kemblor the gnome meets his end after only one pass over the keel. His spirit joins that of his eidolon Odosha. The head is removed, a brass plate “Kemblor” is attached, then it is thrown into the corpse barrel.

The crew remains riled up for the rest of the day.

Then they come across a prize that ends up taking them… At least for most of their spare cash. The Nun’s Dishonor under Captain Pugwash is a ship full of whores bound for Ilizmagorti. And by pure chance on the weather tables both ships are becalmed for a couple days. The entire ToA crew blows their ready money on days of straight debauchery.

Once they get underway, they experience one of the heavy storms that the giant permanent hurricane known as the Eye of Abendego throws off. They came through it but there were some close scrapes and they are grateful to see Mediogalti Island finally heave into sight.

Sixth Session(9 page pdf) – We confront the witch Areelu Vorlesh, in order to slay her and then to close the Worldwound for good! We also get an undead Storm King, a hundred-handed titan, an avatar of Deskari, and more in the bargain. No worries for mythic murderhobos, and we close the rift – but then we get tossed into a landscape with Deskari the demon lord himself! All that remains is blood and vengeance in the climax of this AP!

So you know it’s going to be a big fight when it starts off like this:

The doors at the end of the chamber slam open. Standing there is Areelu Vorlesh and Korramzadeh the Storm King. The Storm King has changed somewhat since the characters last slew him – he now has a distinctly undead cast to his features. She is also escorted by four vrolokai demons. Areelu Vorlesh starts off by casting gate and bringing in a hecatonchires titan, a massive creature fifty feet tall with a hundred arms, each of them carrying a weapon. The creature is so massive it must squeeze to get through the twenty-foot portal.

This fight is actually a challenge. We have multiple party members struck down, though breath of lifes and miracles flow heavy to bring them back into the fray. I go after the vrolokais, Trystan and Calanthe go after Areelu Vorlesh, Shawanda tanks the Storm King, our new friend the inevitable keeps the titan occupied with a wall of force. Tabregon and Tsuguri pour the healing and extra actions into us. Finally,

Trystan opens fire on Areelu Vorlesh with the mighty sun bow, driving her to the very doorstep of death. Seeing her near to her end, he fires a single remaining arrow into her throat. She falls to her knees, staggered, pierced through by seven arrows. Shawanda takes advantage of this to strike down Areelu Vorlesh, executing the witch with Radiance. As she dies, the characters are able to see her soul emerge from her body, and then get dragged down by a swarm of insects to be absorbed into the material of the Abyss.

She’s dead, we do the ritual, the Worldwound is closed, Golarion is saved! Happy ending? Well, it would be but when we do that we all get teleported in disarray into someplace where Deskari the demon lord and a batch of heavy hitter minions (balors, apocalypse locusts) are lurking. I (Antonius) am struck down immediately and Deskari and his goons loom over us…

And then Trystan shoots him right in the head – rolls a crit, pulls a card from the Paizo crit deck we use, head shot, instant kill. (There may have been a one rolled on a massive damage save in here too, I don’t remember clearly). But it was a righteous single shot demon prince kill. We’re all like “What the shit!?!” The balors all skedaddle. Victory! We all roleplay our new lives as gods/mortals/Kung FU wanderers for a denouement.

Fifth Session (9 page pdf) – “The Way South” – The crew finishes up their business and intelligence gathering in Azir and set sail to Mediogalti Island. Along the way they pick up a castaway and a strange sea dragon begins picking off crewmen!

The first part is the PCs wrapping up all the various subplots they self-initiated while in the city. Warnings of Chelaxian warships, information about White Estrid, hook-ups between the aasimar women and the ship’s officers… Local lad Said becomes Sindawe’s cabin boy… And per “the deal,” the Argentate Blades are put to use *by* the PCs and abduct Zorzi back!

Sindawe is initially really worried and thinks the woman will be traumatized or damaged. As is my wont I roll d20 off the cuff to determine magnitude of things and – she was unfazed.

“I got fed and bathed and lounged around and all I had to do was some sex with a modestly ugly man.”

The scene with the warring stevedores is drawn from my reading of historical naval stuff… The amount of cajoling, threatening, outright bribery, competition, duplicity, etc. is mind-boggling so I tried to capture some of that flavor. Sindawe’s player has read a lot of the same things so he’s pretty clever about making it all work out OK.

Then it’s goodbyes and off with their hired navigator Tarek to go to Ilizmagorti, home of the Red Mantis assassins and friendly pirate port.

Kemblor

And then they pick up a gnomish castaway! His name is Kemblor and he seems nice, but his last ship got destroyed by some kind of monster. Some kind of monster that then begins to raid the Teeth of Araska!

Fifth Session (8 page pdf) – We kill some giant maggots, a devastator, the Favored of Deskari, some demented aeons… Actually, we heal the aeons. Then we kill some demons and free an inevitable. I personally kill a mythic quasit in a gimp mask. The Abyss gets goofier all the time.

The demon killing’s not done yet. It’s fight after fight as we get to the Heart of the Worldwound.

Shawanda steps up to a katpaskier demon, Radiance in hand. She cuts free its arms, then its legs, then severs its head. Evil-smelling ichor flows across the floor. She pronounces, “This is how you treat assassins who have no respect for life.” She is unaware that her words echo those of Prince Argrath upon his return to Pavis.

Our session scribe, besides being invested in the fight descriptions, is also indulging his penchant for Gloranthan lore. But what all this boils down to is we fight bugs and demons and stuff. We’re jaded so we’re just like “OK” but then when a quasit with a gimp mask shows up that gets our attention!

Third Session (missing) – The characters invaded the Soul Foundry and grabbed the Suture, a crippled anti-mythic aura demon. At that point Khorramzadeh the Storm King showed up and the city of Iz started to vanish into the Pit. The characters slew the Storm King and celebrated their victory as they escaped from the crumbling city.

Khorramzedeh the Storm King

Fourth Session (10 page pdf) – Time to close the Worldwound for good! So we kill, that being the answer to all problems. We kill some wormy dragon riders, kill some demons, kill Diurgus the Brood Lord, kill locust-dudes…

Well sorry, one of our summaries went missing, and it was one where we totes had to kill a super-balor. I mainly remember trying to keep the Suture way away from the action so he wouldn’t dampen our mythic goodness and we stomped him out like we stomped out everything this AP.

Then we go chill with Queen Galfrey of Mendev. She’s our BFF. She says we need to go to Threshold and perform some ritual that has details but is mainly about killing things. So we do. We have a pretty good fight with a bunch of locust swarm guys riding ancient black dragons. When I (Antonius) murderize the last dragon I appreciate our session scribe’s poetic turn:

Shredded scales fall from the sky like defiled snowflakes.

In fact our scribe is really on with the purple prose today, so Shawanda and I vie for coolest sounding kill. Next up is me on a shemhazian:

Antonius leads by shattering the shemhazian demon, leaving the creature upon the brink of oblivion and bleeding out quickly. He tells the creature, “You do not know it, but you are already dead.” He rerolls two of his missed attacks and all thirty-five feet of the demon collapses to the ground. The thing weights some 12,000 pounds and it gushes an ocean of blood.

Then Shawanda on a kalavakus:

Shawanda howls out her sacred rage as she divides the last of the kalavakus into two parts, dishonoring the first and defiling the second.

And we kill a balor covered with tick swarms. That was lovely. Combo!

Antonius circles around the vermin balor, his eyes glaring, his fists dripping unnatural gore. He strikes, but Diurgus evades the worst effect of his attacks. Calanthe launches a mythic flesh to stone against him, slowing him. And Shawanda steps to the fore bearing mighty Radiance. Her first strike drives deep into the unsacred breast. Her second severs Diurgus’ spine, covering the blessed blade with rivers of black-flowing gore.

Second Session (17 page pdf) “The Tomb of Akhentepi” – We thoroughly loot a tomb and indulge in shopping and revelry afterwards. But even in the life of a Mummy Rustler it’s “time to make the donuts” and we go back into our next score…

We get some snazzy magic items and a chariot from the tomb, but even more cool, two captured constructs – an iron cobra and a little clay guy! We end up having to trade the guy to a sorceress to get the iron cobra put under our control, which is a fair deal. We put our loot in our inn room, in a trapped chest with an iron cobra in it. Now try to steal our crap! Mmmwah hah haaaa!

We find out that the local smugglers like grinding up mummies to make a drug called mumia, which we immediately dub “Osirian Marching Powder” and joke about. Khaled even procures a twist of it when he picks some Urgathoan cultist’s pocket. Apparently there’s a slight chance of turning into a ghoul when you take it, which isn’t really going to dissuade him from snorting it off the ass of a high-priced hooker if it comes to that.

We then all focus on hooking up with other tomb raiders, Olympic Village style. There’s a fight between Usif and one of his fire-cult competitors, which empowers us to leap around and chant “Fire It Up!” like in The Crow. He wins, no thanks to us.

Then it’s off to our next ruin, the House of Pentheru, in which we are confident our riches await!